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U.S. Government Proposed Manipulating CDC Guidelines to Avoid Mask Shortages: Whistleblower:
The U.S. government proposed manipulating information about whether N95 masks worked to fight the spread of coronavirus in the general public, according to Dr. Richard Bright, a whistleblower who testified publicly for the first time on Thursday. The deception was an effort to avoid shortages and keep masks available for U.S. health care workers, but likely had a ripple effect throughout the country, leaving many people to believe that all masks are useless or even harmful during a pandemic. Bright's testimony is the first confirmation from a high-ranking official that the U.S. government actively sought to distribute incorrect information about N95 masks during the covid-19 pandemic.
Dr. Bright told the House Subcommittee on Health on Thursday about his attempts to warn others in the Department of Health and Human Services about the pending shortage of masks in January and early February, just as the novel coronavirus was spreading outside of China. Bright said that officials at the meeting simply said they would change the recommendations put out by the CDC to discourage the general public from buying masks.
"I indicated we know there will be a critical shortage of these supplies. We need to do something to ramp up production," Dr. Bright, the former top vaccine specialist at HHS, said of a meeting with HHS officials on February 7.
"They indicated if we notice there is a shortage, that we will simply change the CDC guidelines to better inform people who should not be wearing those masks, so that would save those masks for our health care workers," Dr. Bright testified.
"My response was, 'I can not believe you can sit and say that with a straight face'," Bright said. "That was absurd."
[...] Dr. Bright's entire 6-hour testimony is available on YouTube, and it's quite damning.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Sunday May 17 2020, @03:57PM
I get kind of tired of the condescension spewed at the public -- most people are perfectly competent if given adequate information. Most people are not just a gaggle of proles whose only purpose is to gurgle and har-har and serve their better masters.
The reason the CDC's messaging was ineffective was exactly because people aren't the stupid morons they think they are: "Wearing a mask won't protect you from CV19. We need to make sure medical personnel have masks."
It doesn't take a genius to read between the lines and for people to conclude that masks are in fact good protection -- if they weren't, medical pros wouldn't need them. It's true they must be worn properly and donned and doffed properly, but the conclusion that masks are good was a logical conclusion and it certainly lead to an increase in the conduct the CDC was trying to avoid -- mask hoarding. In the best case, it lead to the false conclusion that masks are useless. (and you lot think we're the morons??)
What the CDC should have done is respected citizen's intelligence and said "We have a shortage of masks. Frontline healtcare workers are at greatest risk. We need healthcare workers to keep people alive. Please don't hoard masks. If you have a masks please donate them. If you can make a mask, these [link] materials work best. If you wear a mask, see here [link] for how to use it safely." People are very willing to be helpful and conscientious during a crisis -- until you bury them in bullshit and leave them confused or cynical. And beyond that, how many 100s of millions of our hard earned tax dollars is it legitimate to use to lie and mislead us? Zero dollars, that's how much.